At its core it's still about capitalism, using football as a framework. I think even people who don't care about footy will watch it, especially if they already watch you
Also annoying to see sports media go “this probably isn’t good for football or humanitarian causes” and then just go on reporting about it as if it’s all regular now.
@@EliaFlowers well yeah but I think it was always still possible he would become a sell out. Gerard is supposed to be a one club kind of guy, Liverpool was his culture, but clearly socialism never was. Actually the most pro-capitalist, right-wing person I know is a Liverpool fan. This same person tried to justify Boris Johnson's Covid parties by saying 'yeah but he brought us Brexit, and that overrules the bad things he did because now I can trade with places outside of Europe'. I think really what most people like about Liverpool is their Football success, it's the city that's socialist but not the club.
I need to point out that, for me, being a teen when the Premier League began, capitalism has slowly destroyed football since that point. David Dein and the rise of Sky TV pumping money into Man. U. especially. Blackburn basically bought the league through Jack Walker's money and Leicester was a surprise but it was funded by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, so both were not quite the fairytale they might seem.
As an avid football fan I used to think for years that the problems in football weren't caused by football itself but by outside forces More and more it seems however, that even if football isn't the direct cause of all the problems within the sport it is a system more than ripe for abuse
i have no interest in any sports, am also american\canadian so i have no real connection to football really, but you have such a way with the topics you pick and how you connect them to political, cultural & social things that you still keep me engaged, i will def be sticking around for this one still kav 😁
@@whatifschrodingersboxwasacofinwell i used it to just mean someone from the general north american part of the world but for me specifically i was born in canada and still have my canadian citizenship but i live in the united states
Capitalism has basically ruined football since 1992 with the start of the Premier League, where the clubs who have money thrown at them succeed at the expense of the smaller clubs. Ever since the dollar came off the gold standard in 1971 and became based on Saudi oil, the US and UK have routinely ignored the horrific atrocities of the Saudi regime, which has included crucifying children and chopping up journalists. That's why the US practically burned their ass to Kuwait once they knew oil supplies could be affected. Incidentally, what is less well known about this war is that Iraq threatened to drop the US dollar in buying and selling oil. Libya was going to do the same with the gold Dinar.
Jordan Henderson going to the Saudi Pro League was beyond depressing because of just how much he advocated for the LGBTQ+ community. Fabinho, Mane and Firmino not so much, they never claimed to support us. Nor did Steven Garrard. But Hendo did and it leaves a sour taste, to say the least. The others, I sort of understand. They want to make their wealth generational etc etc. And I totally expect Mo Salah to be over there next season. But yes, this is grim. Beyond grim.
I just got to the bit where you talk about Hendo. And yeah, you summed it up pretty succinctly. I just want to add how sad it was that, after everything he did for us, Hendo's "farewell" was slinking out of an empty Anfield without so much as a YNWA from the fans in the Kop. Really quite sad and all for the Saudi Pro League. And I know people will say the money was worth it but it;s still sad on a human level.
@@Miaowzi no, footballers are the ones to decide whether they sign with a club. the transfer fees are only paid to buy them out of the contract (that's why there are no transfer fees when their contracts end).
Been saying it for years, football is a bubble that is about to burst and all these vultures will pick apart the bones and move onto the next thing and leave the game behind in a horrific state
“… saying for years” … “about to burst”. Confusing time-line. Or are you just keeping your prediction in your back pocket for the day when (if?) it comes true so you can say ‘told you so’? Do you charge people for readings? 🔮😂
@@whatifschrodingersboxwasacofin well considering football has been around for 150+ years, me saying the bubble is about to burst over the past few years isn’t that long
@@mrlunar62 A bubble is an economic cycle that is characterized by the rapid escalation of market value, particularly in the price of assets. This fast inflation is followed by a quick decrease in value, or a contraction, that is sometimes referred to as a "crash" or a "bubble burst."
What I don''t understand is that Ronaldo is literally one of the richest sports people in the world. He probably already has more money than the combined lifetime of 500 people. Why does he need THIS much more? He would already be getting paid well wherever he went and that's not even considering the sponsorship money he gets, but why does he need the Saudi money on top of what he already gets? What more could he possibly need it for? I've learned that whether it's big corporations or people - it doesn't matter how much money they have, their goal is to have all of it if they can. Regardless of how they get it.
Even more ironic is that the Saudi tourism body tried to buy advertising at the WWC, thankfully the LOC put a stop to that. Off topic, for us Aussies it’s nice to have a World Cup in a decent time zone.
@@paulorocky one of the members of my D&D group is an Aussie so the group joke is that they’ve got 2 Aussies until late August. Anyway, glad you get a chance to properly enjoy a Cup for a change! 🍻
Since you enjoy sports, can you consider making a video about how sports are used to legitimize nation-states and stir feelings of nationalism and how it doesn't have to be this way? That'd be an interesting analysis in my opinion. Cheers.
as an american who doesn’t watch football too much this was a very interesting watch as it has never really occurred to me that you could just buy local teams and completely ruin the entire sport extremely infuriating
MLS is similar to a smaller scale. Like 20 teams just popped out of nowhere in the last 10 years and they expect people to care about teams that are formed by millionaires in an attempt to make money. I find it hard to rationalize how someone could just suddenly care about a soccer team that was only recently created by a few millionaires. There is no organic fan bases or culture.
Yep, that's what makes me mad about "Saudi is killing football", like if capitalism hasn't got the core of everything. Sadly, people on here want a change on our leagues but they are too "lazy" to support them, we have been watching European leagues since birth and Europe and the yankees have the money, it's complecated to make a change (and can't blame them too, our leagues' level is bs)
TBF, the South American domestic leagues have historically not paid well at all. (Comparatively) Unless you play for one of the big clubs in Brazil or Argentina, it’s unlikely you’re even making 6 figures. So the European money is a lot harder to turn down.
I remember Man City playing Bristol Rovers in league 1, they packed out their ground and packed out every away end too. They weren't a world wide club like United or Liverpool but they've always been a well supported club with a loyal fan base
I've gone from absolutely living and breathing football in the 90s and 2000s to not even checking scores any more. Top tier English football has been commodified and commercialised no differently to Hollywood superhero franchises. Clubs with full squads of foreign mercenary players that just do what their agents tell them. Despotic regimes buying clubs to launder their image or literally launder money. The game is a tedious, santized, but hugely profitable business where the action on the pitch is almost secondary to profitability.
Morocco has had two back to back amazing WC performances (Men’s Cup and Women’s Cup) and they seem like they’re just very invested in the game and their teams, and there is real excitement for the game in Morocco. The Philippines have no soccer culture at all, they couldn’t care less about the game. I’d be more upset about any Cup in The Philippines 🇵🇭 than a Cup in Morocco, which outside of having funded teams, also has a history of their top talent going to France for colonial reasons.
Morocco just uses their ultra nationalism propaganda to get the players from europe who have moroccan origins to play for national team .and the joke is morocco doesn’t really support home talent even tho they have alot . Saudi is way better at it player and academic policies
Most of moroccan players are foreign born, More than 70% for the men's team and 100% for the women's team. Most of the French football players are french born and raised mainly from the paris region and the french overseas territories.
@@losnino4515French overseas territory huh? Which hasn't been existing for a long time and players from there can definitely not be called French born
Probably due to it being a global game, the wider football world often feels incredibly conservative. It’s nice to hear from a lefty fan for a change. I share a lot of your same sentiments. I still love the game but I’d lie if I said I wasn’t worried about where it’s been going for the past many years.
How is this different from English and Italian leagues buying South American football talents?? and why is your reaction not the same when USA and China did this??
That's why I tell folks to follow the smaller leagues and lower divisions. Yeah the quality isn't as high but its more pure football than the top leagues.
Yeah to a certain extend I agree with you about the problem of big money directing the flow of football players, but it does kind of make me laugh that somebody from the UK is just now talking about this. The Premier League has been the major culprit in just buying up the best players from smaller leagues (like the Eredivisie), and I'm not even talking about the best players in the first team! The way they have destroyed talented young players, by scooping them up at a young age, putting them into a cycle of loaning them out to a different club every year, has been awful to see. To me, this is even more immoral then buying up adult players with obscene amounts of money, because these youngsters get offers from Prem clubs that are obscene amounts of money for 16 year old kids, with parents that probably also haven't experienced having these amounts of money. And I do like the Prem, been watching since the Invincibles. The UK has the most claim to being the motherland of football, if you look at the more than 100 years of football culture that has developed from the ground up. But seeing some players leave for Saudi Arabia has been kind of sweet with regards to how they have been the major capitalist influence in Europe for at least 2 decades (which has largely been dominated by clubs propped up by big money, not only Prem clubs).
I'm a Bolton Wanderers fan, we used to be in the Premier League missed opportunity, bad timing, bad signings, injuries and sadly Muamba. Dropped the club out of the Premier League and we haven't made it back since and it's no wonder the amount of money being thrown about even back then was getting out of hand, but now it is ridiculous, you could survive in the league back then if you had even under 100 million worth of players, nowadays well 400 million is no garentuee. Our goal keeper who was worth about 1 million when we had him last season has just been bought by Burnley for 15 million. Almost every player in the Premier League is worth more than our entire team put together and somehow we are meant to make it back there. We have some great owners now, who really support us even coming to most away games. However I think it would bankrupt them getting us in the top half of the championship let alone Premier League.
The Premier League and La Liga started it, Saudi Arabia is just doing what has been happening on a large scale throughout the last decade, and big league football just doesn't feel genuine anymore.
Could you explain how you see "sportswashing" in practice? Because i dont see it. Whos opinion of Saudia Arabia gets changed? Ive onky ever seen the oposite. That middle eastern clubs get more negative press not less. Every sports journalist who never ever ever talks about human rights suddenly talk about it when a middle eastern club takes over. So the negativity has increased not lessened.
Modern football has been morally corrupt since the start of the Premier League which itself was a breakaway by the biggest clubs in England in order to maximize viewership etc but at the heart of it was a desire to maximize profit, at the time in the 90s Seria A was the biggest league in the world with owners and money others couldn't compete with, players from around the world flocked to Italy, the same way they would do to England as the 2000s came along. Investment has been scrappping the sport's heart for decades, Saudi's recent investment is the most mask off moment in football history, as its the final comfirmation, if any was needed, that football is for the priviliged, gone away from its working class roots, it has been gutted and left to die.
A lot of people are afraid of what all that Saudi money will do to european football. But we do not have to speculate what could happen, we've seen it happen in the past. We just have to look at what european football did to South american football. Brazil and Argentina had some of the best players and thus they had some of the best national tournaments in the world. They still have great talents but no team can even come close to the budget of a top european team. Maybe with Italy, which is the lowest spending of the big european tournaments. But the talent drain towards Italy continues. And now players are leaving earlier and earlier since european teams started paying more and more for younger and younger players. The big sin of the Saudi league is doing to Europeans what they do to other countries. The sin is to threaten to be an actually competitor to europe.
Professional sports isn't my bag for this very reason. It's often just a way for rich criminals to launder their money and it gives the poor a slim sliver of a chance at climbing out of poverty. But thoughtful content as per usual
Boo hoo, European clubs have done the same thing with South American players since the 1990s and especially 2000s. Tons of European clubs have been owned by people with Russian mob ties; Saudi government; etc. for years too. I agree what SA is doing is a problem but it's a little annoying how it's only being talked about now that European fans are starting to experience what South American fans have been dealing with for decades.
Capitalism had its acceptable phase in football until the late 90s/early 00s, but since then, especially with Abramovich's involvement, it has deteriorated significantly. The Premier League shoulders a significant responsibility, yet Middle Eastern funding has propelled it to the state of a bubble waiting to burst. The entire sport has transformed into a disheartening experience for fans due to the exorbitant prices of tickets, replica jerseys, and the steep cost of subscribing to numerous broadcasters just to access what was once available on fewer channels. The notion of competition reducing costs for the consumer hasn’t exactly come to fruition.
Perfect competition does not and cannot exist in "free markets", which on their own are nothing but pipe dreams. Left unregulated, they just become the playground of the most powerful entities.
Very interesting! Shame to see football going down this bleak path. Unfortunately cash is always king 😢 saw an interview with Henderson recently and he said Gerrard being coach was a massive reason why he went there. Nothing to do with the 700k a week they are giving him lol
I'm not a football fan but I'm a cricket and Aussie Rules Football fan and this does concern me, especially with cricket. Fortunately, the Saudis aren't too interested in the AFL as far as I can tell.
@261i7 it's not really a popular sport over there. The only people who may enjoy it over there are Southeast Asian labourers, and they're seen as human refuse over there so their tastes probably won't be taken up further.
Saudi produces the most drinkable water in the world so not only might they hold out through climate change, they'll still hold power even if the world went green
I used to be a huge sports fan, but literally its all become such a "product" that i dont even enjoy it anymore. Its all just become way too corporate and after colin kaepernick it all just left a bad taste in my mouth. Capitalism ruins everything.
Saudi Arabia also owns part of Capcom, Nintendo, and all of SNK. They also helped pay for the Elon Twitter buy out. They are slowly buying everything, but at the end of the day, the US and the UK continue to support them and buy their products.
North Korea has the reputation for being the weird, upside down country where a dictator forces everyone to live these ridiculous lives but I think Saudi Arabia deserves that title. I've never been to either country but Saudi Arabia seems much more bizarre to me.
This transfer window has been nothing short of disgusting, Football already is rife with inflated prices and money laundering. I hope someday Kav will collab with Alfie HITC, I’m sure they would get along
All the way through this vid I was thinking "he really should have watched HITC Sevens vid on this topic beforehand" lol. Alfie is the king of the intersection between politics, corruption & football.
Even MLS got the idea how to do football (despite not having a relegating which they should and their other sports upset for the NFL). Saudi doing this as an attraction. It doesn’t feel like football anymore. It’s similar to when Martin Scorsese saying MCU movies are amusement parks.
football means so much to so many people its really sad seeing this happen to leagues and teams, and it also means that leagues like Argentinas league or Brazils league fall even more behind and cant compete.
Used to work for Haaretz Sports. I remember editing a really insightful article about the insane monopoly man city now hold on real estate in the city of Manchester. The article's paywalled now i think, but if i recall correctly, they're basically landlords for half the city now. If have some local contacts/articles that could help you cover the topic, that would probably work really well as a video as well.
"How Saudi Arabia is DESTROYING Football" The greed started in the EPL, Saudi is just continuing with the culture. I haven't been a fan in a long time.
I completely Disagree with you, Saudi Arabia is just trying to improve their football and they have their own rights to do so, also the english football league in the sixties had money from the king and queen funds spent on them to invest so why blame the saudis now if even the best football league in the world Right now did that ?!
Difference is that the premier league in the 60s was made great by its National born players and not by hiring foreigners. Nothing wrong with buying foreigners but trying to make a good league without a good foundation of national players is never going to work.
I find this video to be incoherent. Somehow american sports (which generally have wage caps to assure one team cant buy every player, and normally dont move locations unless there are no fans in the last place) is more capitalistic than soccer... which allows you to buy all of the best players and remain at the top (for the most part). As well, its ok for a world cup to be in saudi arabia, because people like football, but its not ok for them to have a foreign roster like every other team. Which is it? People need soccer to watch or we shouldnt allow soccer in an awful government? You are all over the place, I feel like you are too close to soccer and leftist politics to make a good analysis of how they both work together.
As a lifelong Man City supporter I hate what has been done to my club. The book "Richer than God " by David Conn described my feelings towards Man City pretty accurately.
The English started it, but now someone else is doing it, "it's going to destroy football"? WTF? OK for us not for you? Also the English are the worst for selling their clubs to the money men
Personally, i prefer small and local teams. That's true football for me, it feels more pure. The small stadiums, local fans gathering and watching their team play. It feels like football. Another plus is that the Saudis won't be interested because the club isn't a huge team like Real Madrid or something. They'll steer clear of it
That's what I watch, in both forms of football, and baseball as well. Lower division, minor and amateur leagues. The big league game is little more than a staged, artificial spectacle anymore.
Acho engraçado que o que está acontecendo na Europa é o que rolou aqui com o futebol sulamericano. Hoje em dia a coisa é tão absurda que dizem que um garoto só precisa fazer dois dribles e um gol pra eu time europeu vir aqui e já contratar ele.. A Europa já estragou o futebol aqui. A liga brasileira era uma das mais fortes do mundo, mas o dinheiro manda e todas as nossas estrelas hoje já vão jovens pra Europa. Triste demais pra gente que vive no Brasil.
I used to play Sunday league when I was kid and I won player of the year, best achievement ever, i still bring it up any chance I get lol I coulda been a contender! 😊
What this is, it is ruining the world cup. EPL may be the "best" football league, but England as a team is a serial choker in international level. They can't even win European competition. The English are poisoning their own domestic league, and the insular mindset of English folks also don't help them develop their talents outside their comfort zone of home league, where they lose out to foreign players. Saudi Arabia also did the same, they poisoned their own talent pool well, with easy money. And like American sports, money ruins the US national teams. Players are getting so expensive that there are a lot of money makers prohibiting their sports participation outside their main contractors to prevent "unnecessary injuries". A lot of players are not allowed to play in park, despite many of them wanting to, Kevin Durant famously refused to sign a contract that contains prohibition to play casual games in public court he mostly grew up with, playing pick up games with neighbourhood folks. Insurers be damned. Today, the US Men Basketball team is headlined by the likes of Jalen Brunson and Brandon Ingram, who? Where the flick is Stephen Curry or Jimmy Butler or Jayson Tatum or Devin Booker? Where the heck is the likes of Kyrie Irving or Trae Young? This is American sports entertainment, it already destroyed US baseball team too... with baseball players being more insanely more expensive than any other sports player. Mike Trout has to state it himself to play for the US national baseball team. Yet, they still got beat by Japan in the final round. This makes your players representing your nations, more loyal to money, not because of their conscience, but because of money interests - insurance, contractors, benefactors, investors won't allow them to do what they do best outside their spectacle. This is easily bad, even for the capitalist oligarchs, because sports are crowd control methods, whether you are theocracy, communist, or capitalist - class division exists. And to keep the oppressed calm, you "distract" these group with sports, religion, and stuffs like that. The Romans famously did it using chariot racing and gladiator events - that's how Gaius Julius Caesar rise to fame... not through military like Pompeii did, not through wealth like Crassus did. He peddles influence through generously sponsoring brutal "public sports" like gladiator fights and become the most powerful and influential figure in the Roman Republic. If these greedy wealthy people take away public grass root sports from the ordinary people - well, watch what will happen.
Well, if I was a football club I'd like to be Wrexham as far as the owners go because they genuinely seem to care about the community and not only the football.
@261i7 Football itself isn't ruined but the Champions League football is a preposterous joke. 50 something UEFA countries eligible for a 32 team tournament that is soon to have FIVE teams from one country competing. Hundreds of top flight clubs across Europe and only a ridiculously small amount of them from a smaller set of countries will ever win it again. Even some tinpot clubs from England are now richer than former European giants. The whole thing is a mess.
I've been wanting to watch this video since you posted it a couple months ago but I was scared to. I am an American who has been a Newcastle United fan for about 15 years, this video actually has helped me come to the conclusion of not supporting NUFC at all, everytime I go to meetups here in Portland where I founded the local Toon Army chapter in 2015 I feel like the regulars who show up don't really notice the negative impact PIF has. I don't really want to support the local MLS club (or NWSL club until next year after a sale) because the current owner has enabled abusers and silenced survivors. I love this sport and there are smaller grassroots clubs in Portland that I've considered supporting and now that sounds like a better solution. I've thought about becoming a Liverpool fan often because of the fanbase and I have a decent amount of friends here who are Liverpool supporters that said they'd welcome me when I'm ready, my fear is that Liverpool could be bought by someone with poor morals eventually as well. I believe that the creation of the Premeir League as a whole made all this inevitable. It really sucks.
I'd love to see a football collaboration video between Kav and Alfie from HITC Sevens some day. As awful as the Saudi regime is, its sovereign wealth fund has been making investments in the biggest companies in the world, many of whom we're all familiar with, so taking a moral stand against them will only become increasingly difficult.
I am sorry to say but the Premier League has been doing what the Saudi League is doing for years. Buying players from other leagues but nobody lost their shit
Everything that's wrong with football has an easy solution: Watch women's football instead. You don't have the obscene heaps of cash distorting everything, you have relative parity which not only means that more teams have a chance to win things but also that there is room for someone new to pop up and whereas in men's football you will have about 40% of a game being passive (stoppages, time wasting, etc), in women's football it's a lot less.
Yeah Nah 😂😂😂. They can barely perform the basic skills let alone play genuine football . You barely see any good skill moves all you see is scrappy play and terrible passes and kicks 😂😂😂
No football club was built "organically". By organic what you actual mean is they were succesful before you were born. But Real Madrid is only succesful because they were bankrolled by the Spanish government. It just happened long before you were born. Nobody complained when Utd won the league every year. Nobody complaines that Bayern win the league every year because theyve installed rules that make it impossible to compete. Where Bayerns wage bill is 28xs larger than thier competition.
I find it funny that in the USA, our Soccer clubs are all for rich kids, and the sport, ironically, compared to other countries, is much more expensive to get in, than say Basketball or (American Football).
Seems ironic that a limey is saying capitalism and that Saudis specifically are ruining football when the Saudis are simply doing what the English/premier league has done for the past 30 years just out competing other European clubs for players with the ability of their clubs either through their historical standing (the big 6) or financial standing ( Crystal Palace are worth more financially than the champions of the Netherlands Ajax due to commercial and TV deals of the respective leagues they play in). The Saudis are simply giving you a taste of your own medicine I find it quite funny to watch the English media and English football fans melt down. Football and capitalism mix very well it’s a business not every club is St Pauli or Rayo Vallecano
What did europe did to latin america earlier is what saudi is going to do to europe. But i would say this will only benifit football as you might know the asian population is much much bigger than the european population.
Finding it endlessly hilarious and sad that the country that did 9/11 just bought pro golf. That’s like… travel back in time to ruin someone’s day in 2002 sort of information.
Saudi is doing exactly what the US has been doing for decades now. The only difference is that saudi has less presence in the world of football but that’s it.
Yes, and I'm sure it's very exciting for the fans. But Wrexham are in League 2 and I can't imagine their owners (the actors) taking them anywhere near the Premier League. There's no way they can compete with teams owned by actual nation states.
For the past 20 years football clubs in the UK have been run by billionaire from Russia and America not once have you talked about it now that muslim owners from Arabic countries are coming buying up two clubs your loosing you're mind. I think you have a problem with Muslims and Islam in general.
It's nice to see a leftist on RUclips addressing this. I find this push by the Saudis to be disturbing. But at the same time, this was inevitable, especially since sports media for the most part don't care about the direction amateur and professional sports are going.
Saudi Arabia also had or still has plans to expand their reach into video games and other sports like motorsports. Let's see how many things their royals can ruin
In the States college sports are the closest we have to European style clubs maybe aside from the Packers who are part owned by the fans. Though college sports is moving towards pro style now
This video will probably do very badly because it's a pretty big departure from my usual content - feel free to show it some love with likes etc 😅
I finally feel seen as a lefty and football fan though so thanks for that. It’s two things that don’t often intersect 😅
Hey Kav, what is your opinion of the American lefty streamer Vaush? 🌻
@buttercxpdraws8101 badempanada is huge fan of vaush 😊
@@buttercxpdraws8101vaush sucks, he’s a western chauvinist, bigoted and he’s got some pretty serious allegations against him
At its core it's still about capitalism, using football as a framework. I think even people who don't care about footy will watch it, especially if they already watch you
The Saudis are investing in a lot of video game companies and esports teams too
to achieve halal gaming /j
SNK purchase comes to mind
MBS ruined King Of Fighters 15 for me
@@CondlaSWait, what? SNK like.. KOF devs?? Really?
Oh wow, yeah, you weren't judding, that's. Not something I expected to see.
Also annoying to see sports media go “this probably isn’t good for football or humanitarian causes” and then just go on reporting about it as if it’s all regular now.
That is their job.
@@vylbird8014 so just don’t stand for anything.
@@hello7032not the job of a reporter
@@SsdistJeje very juvenile view of reporting
@@hello7032 they should report facts only, not put a spin on it. Gueds u are a fox news fan
Greed poisons everything.
I've totally lost all respect for Steven Gerard
more specifically capitalism, because capitalism is what encourages greed.
@@lloroshastar6347 and for Jordan Henderson
@@EliaFlowers well yeah but I think it was always still possible he would become a sell out. Gerard is supposed to be a one club kind of guy, Liverpool was his culture, but clearly socialism never was. Actually the most pro-capitalist, right-wing person I know is a Liverpool fan. This same person tried to justify Boris Johnson's Covid parties by saying 'yeah but he brought us Brexit, and that overrules the bad things he did because now I can trade with places outside of Europe'.
I think really what most people like about Liverpool is their Football success, it's the city that's socialist but not the club.
Just capitalism friend.
I need to point out that, for me, being a teen when the Premier League began, capitalism has slowly destroyed football since that point. David Dein and the rise of Sky TV pumping money into Man. U. especially. Blackburn basically bought the league through Jack Walker's money and Leicester was a surprise but it was funded by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, so both were not quite the fairytale they might seem.
Great point without capitalism there is no Leicester but don’t tell Kav his head might explode 😂😂😂
True. But the relativity.
As Gordon Strachan said football is immoral, has been for decades .
As an avid football fan I used to think for years that the problems in football weren't caused by football itself but by outside forces
More and more it seems however, that even if football isn't the direct cause of all the problems within the sport it is a system more than ripe for abuse
And stupid. It has always been stupid. 🤷🏼♂️
the real power of football is the games you play with mates on the weekend
i have no interest in any sports, am also american\canadian so i have no real connection to football really, but you have such a way with the topics you pick and how you connect them to political, cultural & social things that you still keep me engaged, i will def be sticking around for this one still kav 😁
What’s an ‘american/canadian’? 🇨🇦
@@whatifschrodingersboxwasacofinwell i used it to just mean someone from the general north american part of the world but for me specifically i was born in canada and still have my canadian citizenship but i live in the united states
As an American who deeply loves football(soccer), one of the reasons I love sports is it’s ability to unite people across so many lines.
Capitalism has basically ruined football since 1992 with the start of the Premier League, where the clubs who have money thrown at them succeed at the expense of the smaller clubs. Ever since the dollar came off the gold standard in 1971 and became based on Saudi oil, the US and UK have routinely ignored the horrific atrocities of the Saudi regime, which has included crucifying children and chopping up journalists. That's why the US practically burned their ass to Kuwait once they knew oil supplies could be affected. Incidentally, what is less well known about this war is that Iraq threatened to drop the US dollar in buying and selling oil. Libya was going to do the same with the gold Dinar.
sad but true.
US and UK are also notorious human rights abusers, both and Saudis are the same
Everyone is moving from western maniacs
Jordan Henderson going to the Saudi Pro League was beyond depressing because of just how much he advocated for the LGBTQ+ community. Fabinho, Mane and Firmino not so much, they never claimed to support us. Nor did Steven Garrard. But Hendo did and it leaves a sour taste, to say the least. The others, I sort of understand. They want to make their wealth generational etc etc. And I totally expect Mo Salah to be over there next season. But yes, this is grim. Beyond grim.
I just got to the bit where you talk about Hendo. And yeah, you summed it up pretty succinctly. I just want to add how sad it was that, after everything he did for us, Hendo's "farewell" was slinking out of an empty Anfield without so much as a YNWA from the fans in the Kop. Really quite sad and all for the Saudi Pro League. And I know people will say the money was worth it but it;s still sad on a human level.
I don't think footballers have a say in that. They're bought and sold like commodities by management.
@@Miaowzi no, footballers are the ones to decide whether they sign with a club. the transfer fees are only paid to buy them out of the contract (that's why there are no transfer fees when their contracts end).
@@NR-fd9wv oh okay
Been saying it for years, football is a bubble that is about to burst and all these vultures will pick apart the bones and move onto the next thing and leave the game behind in a horrific state
@261i7 I know mate, I’ve been playing it longer than you’ve been alive
“… saying for years” … “about to burst”. Confusing time-line. Or are you just keeping your prediction in your back pocket for the day when (if?) it comes true so you can say ‘told you so’? Do you charge people for readings? 🔮😂
@@whatifschrodingersboxwasacofin well considering football has been around for 150+ years, me saying the bubble is about to burst over the past few years isn’t that long
What bubble are u talking about? Like in what sense?
@@mrlunar62 A bubble is an economic cycle that is characterized by the rapid escalation of market value, particularly in the price of assets. This fast inflation is followed by a quick decrease in value, or a contraction, that is sometimes referred to as a "crash" or a "bubble burst."
The only thing to be done by football fans is to avoid purchasing anything advertised in football, as much as possible.
I stopped watching all together
What I don''t understand is that Ronaldo is literally one of the richest sports people in the world. He probably already has more money than the combined lifetime of 500 people. Why does he need THIS much more? He would already be getting paid well wherever he went and that's not even considering the sponsorship money he gets, but why does he need the Saudi money on top of what he already gets? What more could he possibly need it for?
I've learned that whether it's big corporations or people - it doesn't matter how much money they have, their goal is to have all of it if they can. Regardless of how they get it.
When you're offered insane amounts of money to do what you know how to do so well , why would you reject it ????
Remember it's still a job. Wouldn't you want to make more money in a less competitive environment?
As someone who has turned their entire sleep schedule upside down to watch the Women’s World Cup, this is absolutely the content I’m here for.
Even more ironic is that the Saudi tourism body tried to buy advertising at the WWC, thankfully the LOC put a stop to that. Off topic, for us Aussies it’s nice to have a World Cup in a decent time zone.
@@paulorocky one of the members of my D&D group is an Aussie so the group joke is that they’ve got 2 Aussies until late August. Anyway, glad you get a chance to properly enjoy a Cup for a change! 🍻
Since you enjoy sports, can you consider making a video about how sports are used to legitimize nation-states and stir feelings of nationalism and how it doesn't have to be this way? That'd be an interesting analysis in my opinion. Cheers.
as an american who doesn’t watch football too much this was a very interesting watch as it has never really occurred to me that you could just buy local teams and completely ruin the entire sport extremely infuriating
American football is just as corrupt to be honest. Especially in regards to stadiums and how a lot of them are funded by tax payers. :/
MLS is similar to a smaller scale. Like 20 teams just popped out of nowhere in the last 10 years and they expect people to care about teams that are formed by millionaires in an attempt to make money. I find it hard to rationalize how someone could just suddenly care about a soccer team that was only recently created by a few millionaires. There is no organic fan bases or culture.
@@uf3178
Well if it becomes a tradition to go to the games and it’s enjoyable and meaningful then I don’t see why it’s not organic
Haven't European clubs been doing the same thing with South American players?
YES! Especially the Premier League! Which coming from Kav a Brentford and United fan is peak irony 😂😂😂
Spending obscene amounts of blood money that drives up the costs and also the inequality of football is what the EPL has been doing for years.
@@Support-your-local-teamyeah, alot of blood money in Europe
Yep, that's what makes me mad about "Saudi is killing football", like if capitalism hasn't got the core of everything. Sadly, people on here want a change on our leagues but they are too "lazy" to support them, we have been watching European leagues since birth and Europe and the yankees have the money, it's complecated to make a change (and can't blame them too, our leagues' level is bs)
TBF, the South American domestic leagues have historically not paid well at all. (Comparatively) Unless you play for one of the big clubs in Brazil or Argentina, it’s unlikely you’re even making 6 figures. So the European money is a lot harder to turn down.
I remember Man City playing Bristol Rovers in league 1, they packed out their ground and packed out every away end too. They weren't a world wide club like United or Liverpool but they've always been a well supported club with a loyal fan base
I've gone from absolutely living and breathing football in the 90s and 2000s to not even checking scores any more.
Top tier English football has been commodified and commercialised no differently to Hollywood superhero franchises.
Clubs with full squads of foreign mercenary players that just do what their agents tell them. Despotic regimes buying clubs to launder their image or literally launder money.
The game is a tedious, santized, but hugely profitable business where the action on the pitch is almost secondary to profitability.
I feel ya. Pick a team from league 2 or the national league and follow them. It has old school vibes.
Morocco has had two back to back amazing WC performances (Men’s Cup and Women’s Cup) and they seem like they’re just very invested in the game and their teams, and there is real excitement for the game in Morocco. The Philippines have no soccer culture at all, they couldn’t care less about the game. I’d be more upset about any Cup in The Philippines 🇵🇭 than a Cup in Morocco, which outside of having funded teams, also has a history of their top talent going to France for colonial reasons.
Morocco just uses their ultra nationalism propaganda to get the players from europe who have moroccan origins to play for national team .and the joke is morocco doesn’t really support home talent even tho they have alot . Saudi is way better at it player and academic policies
Most of moroccan players are foreign born,
More than 70% for the men's team and 100% for the women's team.
Most of the French football players are french born and raised mainly from the paris region and the french overseas territories.
@@losnino4515 I’m going to retract my previous position, because hosting a Cup can bring new people to the game, and soccer is for everyone.
@@losnino4515French overseas territory huh? Which hasn't been existing for a long time and players from there can definitely not be called French born
Slightly confused on the France thing since the Philippines was colonised by Spain never by France.
Probably due to it being a global game, the wider football world often feels incredibly conservative. It’s nice to hear from a lefty fan for a change. I share a lot of your same sentiments. I still love the game but I’d lie if I said I wasn’t worried about where it’s been going for the past many years.
Fotball has always been very left wing, unions/activisme etc
@@SsdistJejeYep. Working class at its core.
How is this different from English and Italian leagues buying South American football talents?? and why is your reaction not the same when USA and China did this??
That's why I tell folks to follow the smaller leagues and lower divisions. Yeah the quality isn't as high but its more pure football than the top leagues.
Yeah to a certain extend I agree with you about the problem of big money directing the flow of football players, but it does kind of make me laugh that somebody from the UK is just now talking about this. The Premier League has been the major culprit in just buying up the best players from smaller leagues (like the Eredivisie), and I'm not even talking about the best players in the first team! The way they have destroyed talented young players, by scooping them up at a young age, putting them into a cycle of loaning them out to a different club every year, has been awful to see. To me, this is even more immoral then buying up adult players with obscene amounts of money, because these youngsters get offers from Prem clubs that are obscene amounts of money for 16 year old kids, with parents that probably also haven't experienced having these amounts of money.
And I do like the Prem, been watching since the Invincibles. The UK has the most claim to being the motherland of football, if you look at the more than 100 years of football culture that has developed from the ground up. But seeing some players leave for Saudi Arabia has been kind of sweet with regards to how they have been the major capitalist influence in Europe for at least 2 decades (which has largely been dominated by clubs propped up by big money, not only Prem clubs).
The era of football clubs representing working class communities has been in the rear view mirror for quite some time now. 😅 This is the new normal.
I'm a Bolton Wanderers fan, we used to be in the Premier League missed opportunity, bad timing, bad signings, injuries and sadly Muamba. Dropped the club out of the Premier League and we haven't made it back since and it's no wonder the amount of money being thrown about even back then was getting out of hand, but now it is ridiculous, you could survive in the league back then if you had even under 100 million worth of players, nowadays well 400 million is no garentuee. Our goal keeper who was worth about 1 million when we had him last season has just been bought by Burnley for 15 million. Almost every player in the Premier League is worth more than our entire team put together and somehow we are meant to make it back there. We have some great owners now, who really support us even coming to most away games. However I think it would bankrupt them getting us in the top half of the championship let alone Premier League.
The Premier League and La Liga started it, Saudi Arabia is just doing what has been happening on a large scale throughout the last decade, and big league football just doesn't feel genuine anymore.
Could you explain how you see "sportswashing" in practice? Because i dont see it. Whos opinion of Saudia Arabia gets changed? Ive onky ever seen the oposite. That middle eastern clubs get more negative press not less. Every sports journalist who never ever ever talks about human rights suddenly talk about it when a middle eastern club takes over. So the negativity has increased not lessened.
Modern football has been morally corrupt since the start of the Premier League which itself was a breakaway by the biggest clubs in England in order to maximize viewership etc but at the heart of it was a desire to maximize profit, at the time in the 90s Seria A was the biggest league in the world with owners and money others couldn't compete with, players from around the world flocked to Italy, the same way they would do to England as the 2000s came along. Investment has been scrappping the sport's heart for decades, Saudi's recent investment is the most mask off moment in football history, as its the final comfirmation, if any was needed, that football is for the priviliged, gone away from its working class roots, it has been gutted and left to die.
A lot of people are afraid of what all that Saudi money will do to european football. But we do not have to speculate what could happen, we've seen it happen in the past. We just have to look at what european football did to South american football. Brazil and Argentina had some of the best players and thus they had some of the best national tournaments in the world. They still have great talents but no team can even come close to the budget of a top european team. Maybe with Italy, which is the lowest spending of the big european tournaments. But the talent drain towards Italy continues.
And now players are leaving earlier and earlier since european teams started paying more and more for younger and younger players. The big sin of the Saudi league is doing to Europeans what they do to other countries. The sin is to threaten to be an actually competitor to europe.
Professional sports isn't my bag for this very reason. It's often just a way for rich criminals to launder their money and it gives the poor a slim sliver of a chance at climbing out of poverty. But thoughtful content as per usual
Boo hoo, European clubs have done the same thing with South American players since the 1990s and especially 2000s.
Tons of European clubs have been owned by people with Russian mob ties; Saudi government; etc. for years too.
I agree what SA is doing is a problem but it's a little annoying how it's only being talked about now that European fans are starting to experience what South American fans have been dealing with for decades.
yeah with africa as well.
I'm surprised by the runtime of this video, I thought it'd be your magnum opus! Brevity is a virtue so I'm not complaining. Great work as always dude.
Capitalism had its acceptable phase in football until the late 90s/early 00s, but since then, especially with Abramovich's involvement, it has deteriorated significantly. The Premier League shoulders a significant responsibility, yet Middle Eastern funding has propelled it to the state of a bubble waiting to burst.
The entire sport has transformed into a disheartening experience for fans due to the exorbitant prices of tickets, replica jerseys, and the steep cost of subscribing to numerous broadcasters just to access what was once available on fewer channels. The notion of competition reducing costs for the consumer hasn’t exactly come to fruition.
Perfect competition does not and cannot exist in "free markets", which on their own are nothing but pipe dreams. Left unregulated, they just become the playground of the most powerful entities.
Very interesting! Shame to see football going down this bleak path. Unfortunately cash is always king 😢 saw an interview with Henderson recently and he said Gerrard being coach was a massive reason why he went there. Nothing to do with the 700k a week they are giving him lol
Lol why is Saudi Arabia suddenly ruining football but the Prem isn't??
When European nations ruined leagues all over the world by offering insane amounts of money football was just fine I guess. Nothing to see here.
I'm not a football fan but I'm a cricket and Aussie Rules Football fan and this does concern me, especially with cricket. Fortunately, the Saudis aren't too interested in the AFL as far as I can tell.
@261i7 it's not really a popular sport over there. The only people who may enjoy it over there are Southeast Asian labourers, and they're seen as human refuse over there so their tastes probably won't be taken up further.
Nobody is interested in AFL
@Kate-ms2mn a lot of Americans have been getting into it. I really enjoy it.
@261i7 Well here's hoping they don't then.
On the flipside though, what if climate change makes Saudi Arabia virtually unlivable?
Saudi produces the most drinkable water in the world so not only might they hold out through climate change, they'll still hold power even if the world went green
I'll never not chuckle at Kav's intro 😂😂 Tory, capitalist dystopia 😂😂
Why the Europeans are so against Asia football? Football is not only limited to Europe.
I used to be a huge sports fan, but literally its all become such a "product" that i dont even enjoy it anymore. Its all just become way too corporate and after colin kaepernick it all just left a bad taste in my mouth. Capitalism ruins everything.
Saudi Arabia also owns part of Capcom, Nintendo, and all of SNK. They also helped pay for the Elon Twitter buy out. They are slowly buying everything, but at the end of the day, the US and the UK continue to support them and buy their products.
They just bought VICE News
A national fund should not be allowed to buy a club, its a national entity, why dont they create a better national team?
Brilliant video young man!
Had no idea of your love (and skills) of the game.
Totally agree with your points.
North Korea has the reputation for being the weird, upside down country where a dictator forces everyone to live these ridiculous lives but I think Saudi Arabia deserves that title.
I've never been to either country but Saudi Arabia seems much more bizarre to me.
but it was okay when England done it
This transfer window has been nothing short of disgusting, Football already is rife with inflated prices and money laundering.
I hope someday Kav will collab with Alfie HITC, I’m sure they would get along
Can you give some examples of money laundering?
Alfie HITC is an opinionated clown(up his own arse),at least Kav is trying to approach this issue,with facts,no matter,how deluded! 🙄
All the way through this vid I was thinking "he really should have watched HITC Sevens vid on this topic beforehand" lol. Alfie is the king of the intersection between politics, corruption & football.
You are the only creator that I watch every single video from. Great job.👍
I think EPL Football was f-d when clubs like Chelsea was sold to shady people. This is just the next logical step
Very interesting! The 5% stake in Nintendo blew my mind.
Even MLS got the idea how to do football (despite not having a relegating which they should and their other sports upset for the NFL). Saudi doing this as an attraction. It doesn’t feel like football anymore. It’s similar to when Martin Scorsese saying MCU movies are amusement parks.
Howmuch does premier league spend annually on transfers?
football means so much to so many people its really sad seeing this happen to leagues and teams, and it also means that leagues like Argentinas league or Brazils league fall even more behind and cant compete.
Used to work for Haaretz Sports. I remember editing a really insightful article about the insane monopoly man city now hold on real estate in the city of Manchester. The article's paywalled now i think, but if i recall correctly, they're basically landlords for half the city now. If have some local contacts/articles that could help you cover the topic, that would probably work really well as a video as well.
"How Saudi Arabia is DESTROYING Football"
The greed started in the EPL, Saudi is just continuing with the culture. I haven't been a fan in a long time.
Have you read what Chomsky thinks about soccer??
The premier League began this game
Morning Kav 👍. This is a subject that really interests me❤
I completely Disagree with you, Saudi Arabia is just trying to improve their football and they have their own rights to do so, also the english football league in the sixties had money from the king and queen funds spent on them to invest so why blame the saudis now if even the best football league in the world Right now did that ?!
Difference is that the premier league in the 60s was made great by its National born players and not by hiring foreigners. Nothing wrong with buying foreigners but trying to make a good league without a good foundation of national players is never going to work.
I find this video to be incoherent. Somehow american sports (which generally have wage caps to assure one team cant buy every player, and normally dont move locations unless there are no fans in the last place) is more capitalistic than soccer... which allows you to buy all of the best players and remain at the top (for the most part). As well, its ok for a world cup to be in saudi arabia, because people like football, but its not ok for them to have a foreign roster like every other team. Which is it? People need soccer to watch or we shouldnt allow soccer in an awful government? You are all over the place, I feel like you are too close to soccer and leftist politics to make a good analysis of how they both work together.
As a lifelong Man City supporter I hate what has been done to my club. The book "Richer than God " by David Conn described my feelings towards Man City pretty accurately.
You have enjoyed the success don’t lie 😂😂😂
The English started it, but now someone else is doing it, "it's going to destroy football"?
WTF? OK for us not for you?
Also the English are the worst for selling their clubs to the money men
Personally, i prefer small and local teams. That's true football for me, it feels more pure.
The small stadiums, local fans gathering and watching their team play. It feels like football.
Another plus is that the Saudis won't be interested because the club isn't a huge team like Real Madrid or something. They'll steer clear of it
That's what I watch, in both forms of football, and baseball as well. Lower division, minor and amateur leagues. The big league game is little more than a staged, artificial spectacle anymore.
Acho engraçado que o que está acontecendo na Europa é o que rolou aqui com o futebol sulamericano. Hoje em dia a coisa é tão absurda que dizem que um garoto só precisa fazer dois dribles e um gol pra eu time europeu vir aqui e já contratar ele.. A Europa já estragou o futebol aqui. A liga brasileira era uma das mais fortes do mundo, mas o dinheiro manda e todas as nossas estrelas hoje já vão jovens pra Europa. Triste demais pra gente que vive no Brasil.
This is such a bs take. football was already ruined because of capitalism.
I used to play Sunday league when I was kid and I won player of the year, best achievement ever, i still bring it up any chance I get lol
I coulda been a contender! 😊
Blackburn Rovers was not an "upset", they were an expression of money in football.
What this is, it is ruining the world cup.
EPL may be the "best" football league, but England as a team is a serial choker in international level. They can't even win European competition. The English are poisoning their own domestic league, and the insular mindset of English folks also don't help them develop their talents outside their comfort zone of home league, where they lose out to foreign players. Saudi Arabia also did the same, they poisoned their own talent pool well, with easy money.
And like American sports, money ruins the US national teams. Players are getting so expensive that there are a lot of money makers prohibiting their sports participation outside their main contractors to prevent "unnecessary injuries". A lot of players are not allowed to play in park, despite many of them wanting to, Kevin Durant famously refused to sign a contract that contains prohibition to play casual games in public court he mostly grew up with, playing pick up games with neighbourhood folks. Insurers be damned. Today, the US Men Basketball team is headlined by the likes of Jalen Brunson and Brandon Ingram, who? Where the flick is Stephen Curry or Jimmy Butler or Jayson Tatum or Devin Booker? Where the heck is the likes of Kyrie Irving or Trae Young? This is American sports entertainment, it already destroyed US baseball team too... with baseball players being more insanely more expensive than any other sports player. Mike Trout has to state it himself to play for the US national baseball team. Yet, they still got beat by Japan in the final round.
This makes your players representing your nations, more loyal to money, not because of their conscience, but because of money interests - insurance, contractors, benefactors, investors won't allow them to do what they do best outside their spectacle.
This is easily bad, even for the capitalist oligarchs, because sports are crowd control methods, whether you are theocracy, communist, or capitalist - class division exists. And to keep the oppressed calm, you "distract" these group with sports, religion, and stuffs like that. The Romans famously did it using chariot racing and gladiator events - that's how Gaius Julius Caesar rise to fame... not through military like Pompeii did, not through wealth like Crassus did. He peddles influence through generously sponsoring brutal "public sports" like gladiator fights and become the most powerful and influential figure in the Roman Republic. If these greedy wealthy people take away public grass root sports from the ordinary people - well, watch what will happen.
The quality of play has never been better, the game has never been worse.
The PL was doing Saudi Arabia way before Saudi Arabia
Well, if I was a football club I'd like to be Wrexham as far as the owners go because they genuinely seem to care about the community and not only the football.
Finally a Left argument i can get behind...
Messi > Ronaldo
Football was destroyed long before Saudi Arabia got involved. Elite football was ruined a long time ago.
@261i7 keep telling yourself that, kid. Show me anyone with the natural kind of skill Okocha and Maradona had.
@261i7 Football itself isn't ruined but the Champions League football is a preposterous joke. 50 something UEFA countries eligible for a 32 team tournament that is soon to have FIVE teams from one country competing. Hundreds of top flight clubs across Europe and only a ridiculously small amount of them from a smaller set of countries will ever win it again. Even some tinpot clubs from England are now richer than former European giants. The whole thing is a mess.
Weeping from the seeds you sow, classic westerner.
I've been wanting to watch this video since you posted it a couple months ago but I was scared to. I am an American who has been a Newcastle United fan for about 15 years, this video actually has helped me come to the conclusion of not supporting NUFC at all, everytime I go to meetups here in Portland where I founded the local Toon Army chapter in 2015 I feel like the regulars who show up don't really notice the negative impact PIF has. I don't really want to support the local MLS club (or NWSL club until next year after a sale) because the current owner has enabled abusers and silenced survivors. I love this sport and there are smaller grassroots clubs in Portland that I've considered supporting and now that sounds like a better solution. I've thought about becoming a Liverpool fan often because of the fanbase and I have a decent amount of friends here who are Liverpool supporters that said they'd welcome me when I'm ready, my fear is that Liverpool could be bought by someone with poor morals eventually as well. I believe that the creation of the Premeir League as a whole made all this inevitable. It really sucks.
Football was ruined years ago
I'd love to see a football collaboration video between Kav and Alfie from HITC Sevens some day.
As awful as the Saudi regime is, its sovereign wealth fund has been making investments in the biggest companies in the world, many of whom we're all familiar with, so taking a moral stand against them will only become increasingly difficult.
I am sorry to say but the Premier League has been doing what the Saudi League is doing for years. Buying players from other leagues but nobody lost their shit
Everything that's wrong with football has an easy solution: Watch women's football instead. You don't have the obscene heaps of cash distorting everything, you have relative parity which not only means that more teams have a chance to win things but also that there is room for someone new to pop up and whereas in men's football you will have about 40% of a game being passive (stoppages, time wasting, etc), in women's football it's a lot less.
Yeah Nah 😂😂😂.
They can barely perform the basic skills let alone play genuine football .
You barely see any good skill moves all you see is scrappy play and terrible passes and kicks 😂😂😂
@@wosamosman9814Clearly you’ve never watched woman’s football. Women’s football matches are INTENSE sometimes.
@@TheElf_Online
I never said anything about intensity 😑.
I said the skill level is terrible as in I've seen better skills at U17 boys academy sides 😅
But they're alot worse at the actual sport
you hear about the individual transfers and are annoyed but oh my god when you look at all these transfers together its almost demoralizing
No football club was built "organically". By organic what you actual mean is they were succesful before you were born. But Real Madrid is only succesful because they were bankrolled by the Spanish government. It just happened long before you were born. Nobody complained when Utd won the league every year. Nobody complaines that Bayern win the league every year because theyve installed rules that make it impossible to compete. Where Bayerns wage bill is 28xs larger than thier competition.
u didn't mind chelsea having foreign government ownership but its a problem when arabs do it ?
Just another thing capitalism has ruined, next to gaming, movies etc. After Klopp I may just hang up my football watching boots.
11:50 Ngolo Kante has made quite a career for himself despite being only a floating head and two hands
I find it funny that in the USA, our Soccer clubs are all for rich kids, and the sport, ironically, compared to other countries, is much more expensive to get in, than say Basketball or (American Football).
Soccer is one of the few sports which the US isn't number 1.
Seems ironic that a limey is saying capitalism and that Saudis specifically are ruining football when the Saudis are simply doing what the English/premier league has done for the past 30 years just out competing other European clubs for players with the ability of their clubs either through their historical standing (the big 6) or financial standing ( Crystal Palace are worth more financially than the champions of the Netherlands Ajax due to commercial and TV deals of the respective leagues they play in). The Saudis are simply giving you a taste of your own medicine I find it quite funny to watch the English media and English football fans melt down. Football and capitalism mix very well it’s a business not every club is St Pauli or Rayo Vallecano
What did europe did to latin america earlier is what saudi is going to do to europe.
But i would say this will only benifit football as you might know the asian population is much much bigger than the european population.
the concept of buying footballers is crazy, like they're real people they can't be bought💀💀
I was hoping you will talk about female football, and issues with France and Muslim woman
It it also worth noting that the Saudi Investment Fund almost bought WWE back in January. That’s right, WrestleMania almost became SaudiMania
Doesn't really matter with WWE,as everybody outside the USA,knows it is not real and just 'plain pantomime fighting' ! 😂
Or imagine everyone’s favourite boogeyman Vladimir Putin being the head of a group trying to buy football clubs, bring players to play in Russia 😀
Finding it endlessly hilarious and sad that the country that did 9/11 just bought pro golf.
That’s like… travel back in time to ruin someone’s day in 2002 sort of information.
Saudi is doing exactly what the US has been doing for decades now. The only difference is that saudi has less presence in the world of football but that’s it.
What about Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mcelhenney pretty sure they own a fc just curious on those thoughts.
Yes, and I'm sure it's very exciting for the fans. But Wrexham are in League 2 and I can't imagine their owners (the actors) taking them anywhere near the Premier League. There's no way they can compete with teams owned by actual nation states.
What about them?
For the past 20 years football clubs in the UK have been run by billionaire from Russia and America not once have you talked about it now that muslim owners from Arabic countries are coming buying up two clubs your loosing you're mind. I think you have a problem with Muslims and Islam in general.
It's nice to see a leftist on RUclips addressing this. I find this push by the Saudis to be disturbing. But at the same time, this was inevitable, especially since sports media for the most part don't care about the direction amateur and professional sports are going.
Saudi Arabia also had or still has plans to expand their reach into video games and other sports like motorsports. Let's see how many things their royals can ruin
In the States college sports are the closest we have to European style clubs maybe aside from the Packers who are part owned by the fans. Though college sports is moving towards pro style now
The Saudis also have near controlling percentage of PGA golf.
And now Neymar?
Deserves more views mate!